RBIS August 27, 1998: The Pious and the Wise

"Whoever accepts upon himself the seven commandments and is careful to do them is considered one of the pious of the nations of the world, and he has a portion in the World to Come. This is the case if he receives them and does them because because the Holy One, blessed be He, has commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our Teacher that the children of Noah were previously commanded in them. But if he did them because of rational conviction, he is not a resident alien and is not one of the pious of the nations [and not] [but] one of their wise."

I have translated the text here with two manuscript variations marked with brackets.

As you can see, a small change in text produces a very great difference in meaning.

In the Hebrew the difference is of one letter, changing the three-letter word "velo" (vav-lamed-aleph) to "ela" (aleph-lamed-aleph).

This is a somewhat famous passage among scholars of Jewish philosophy and the Rambam, particularly in the academic world in recent years. Many have sought a preference for one reading over the other on the basis of issues of universalism vs. particularism and whether the Rambam can be understood as accepting the medieval concept of natural law.

There are those who wish to see the Rambam as accepting a universal standard of morality which can allow for dialogue with those who do not accept the revelation of Sinai. They opt for the reading which praises the rational philosopher as one of the wise, thereby giving legitimacy to an ethical standard outside of the Torah.

An opposing position chooses the opposite reading, the one traditionally printed in the texts of the Rambam, concluding that there is no basis for ethics outside of divine revelation.

The second issue is in the general framework of medieval philosophy, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Let us examine perhaps the most prominent proponent of the concept of natural law. The medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas, like the Rambam conversant with Aristotle and wishing to harmonize elements of his thought with revelation, claims the existence of a natural law accessible to human reason. He finds natural law sufficient for the ethical conduct of human society but requires revelation because of the need for salvation. Some scholars line up as follows in reading the text.

If we say that the person who infers the seven laws by rational argument is one of the wise, then we have a source in the Rambam for the concept of natural law, thereby seeing the Rambam as part of the general milieu of medieval, neo-Aristotelian philosophical theology. The other reading excludes that position, seeing the Rambam as more fundamentally Jewish and rabbinical and less bound to a historical context and a philosophical tradition.

Traditional Jewish scholarship is reluctant to go so far out on a limb. Normally when there is a variation in manuscripts which is not an open and shut case as to authenticity, the tendency is to justify both readings and not to make radical conclusions hang on the caprices of the copyist or printer's devil.

In that spirit I would like to offer another approach in reading the two alternative texts.

If we say that the rational ethical individual is wise, it may but need not refer either to an independent rational standard for ethics or to a concept of natural law. It is possible that the person is influenced by the existence of revelation in the world, and having chosen to be led in rational argument toward identical conclusions, he is wise, not to the extent of having intuited the basic laws of the universe, but merely in following his reason against his evil inclination.

If we say that he is not wise, again no philosophical conclusion is mandated. The reading of "velo" can of course reject the concepts of rational ethics and natural law, but it could just as well accommodate them.

If we say that such a person is not one of the wise of the nations, it could just as well be because the fundamental ethical principles are so ingrained in humanity as to be obvious. Therefore a human being who does not accept revelation receives no special status or reward for keeping these precepts.

Shabbat Shalom,

Yehoshua Friedman
Kochav HaShachar, Israel